Along with the Intel blade server announcements, Tuesday HP also announced two new AMD based blades, the BL465c G7 and BL685G7.  Although originally viewed as a refresh of their existing AMD blade servers, while at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, I found there were a few interesting facts.  Let’s take a look.

BL465c G7
Before Tuesday’s announcement, HP had 2 Dual CPU AMD blades –  the BL495 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2300) and the BL465c G6 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2400.)  The BL495 had NO hot-plug drives, but maximum memory slots whereas the BL465c G6 offered fewer memory slots but offered hot-plug drives.  The 7th Generation (G7) of the BL465c takes a step toward combining the benefits of the BL495 and the Bl465c G6.  The BL465c G7 is a half-height blade server that has 2 AMD Opteron 6100 CPUs, supports up to 256GB of RAM AND offers 2 hot-plug drive bays. 

If you look at the image of the BL456c G7 on the left, you see only a single hot-plug drive – so where’s the 2nd?  It’s BEHIND the drive you see.  In a very innovative approach, the drives are stacked one behind the other but still “hot-plug” and serviceable without impacting the other drive.  It’s a bit hard to imagine, so take a few minutes to watch my video of the BL465c G7 from the HP Tech Forum EXPO floor (below.)  It’s also important to note this 7th generation server also comes standard with the dual port FlexFabric I/O standard on the motherboard as announced with the additional G7 blade models.

 Here are the specifics of the BL465c G7

• Up to two AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 256 GB of DDR3 memory
• 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Two mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL465c G7, check out HP’s web site.

BL685c G7
The 7th generation of the BL685c provides a 4 socket AMD Opteron 6100.  Code named, “Magny-Cours“, the AMD Opteron 6100 gives a substantial performance increase over the previous generation.  The BL685c G7 comes standard with 32 memory slots which can reach a max of 512GB of RAM. 

Here are the specifics of the BL685c G7:

• Up to four AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 512 GB of DDR3 memory
• (2) 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports per controller
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Three mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL685c G7, check out HP’s web site.

Closer Look at the BL465c G7 and BL685c G7 from HP Tech Forum EXPO